The Great Cholesterol Myth: Why Lowering Your Cholesterol Won't Prevent Heart Disease - and the Statin-Free Plan That Will

Emerging science is showing that cholesterol levels are a poor predictor of heart disease and that standard prescriptions for lowering it, such as ineffective low-fat/high-carb diets and serious, side-effect-causing statin drugs, obscure the real causes of heart disease. Even doctors at leading institutions have been misled for years based on creative reporting of research results from pharmaceutical companies intent on supporting the $31-billion-a-year cholesterol-lowering drug industry.

Cholesterol Clarity: What the HDL Is Wrong with My Numbers?

Are you confused by what your cholesterol levels really say about your health? Don't you wish someone could just spell it out in simple English and tell you what, if anything, you need to do to improve your heart and overall health? That's precisely what Cholesterol Clarity is designed to do. Jimmy Moore, a prolific and highly respected health blogger and podcaster, interviewed 28 of the world's top health experts from various fields to give you the complete lowdown on cholesterol.

Undoctored: Why Health Care Has Failed You and How You Can Become Smarter Than Your Doctor

In his best seller Wheat Belly, Dr. William Davis changed the lives of millions of people by teaching them to remove grains from their diets to reverse years of chronic health damage. In Undoctored, he goes beyond cutting grains to help you take charge of your own health. This groundbreaking exposé reveals how millions of people are given dietary recommendations crafted by big business, are prescribed unnecessary medications, and undergo unwarranted procedures to feed revenue-hungry healthcare systems.

Dish up the red meat, eggs, and whole milk! In this well-researched and captivating narrative, veteran food writer Nina Teicholz proves how everything we've been told about fat is wrong. For decades, Americans have cut back on red meat and dairy products full of "bad" saturated fats. We obediently complied with nutritional guidelines to eat "heart healthy" fats found in olive oil, fish, and nuts, and followed a Mediterranean diet heavy on fruits, vegetables, and grains. Yet the nation's health has declined. What is going on?

The Case Against Sugar

Among Americans, diabetes is more prevalent today than ever. Obesity is at epidemic proportions; nearly 10% of children are thought to have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. And sugar is at the root of these, and other, critical, society-wide, health-related problems. With his signature command of both science and straight talk, Gary Taubes delves into Americans' history with sugar: its uses as a preservative, as an additive in cigarettes, the contemporary overuse of high-fructose corn syrup.

The Salt Fix: Why Experts Got It All Wrong - and How Eating More Might Save Your Life

We all know the dangers of sugar and salt: but the danger attributed to the second white crystal has more to do with getting too little of it, not too much. Too little salt can shift the body into semi-starvation mode, causing insulin resistance, and may even cause twice as much fat to be absorbed for every gram that's consumed. Too little salt in certain populations can also actually increase blood pressure as well as resting heart rate.

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health

For decades we have been taught that fat is bad for us, carbohydrates better, and that the key to a healthy weight is eating less and exercising more. Yet despite this advice, we have seen unprecedented epidemics of obesity and diabetes. Taubes argues that the problem lies in refined carbohydrates, like white flour, easily digested starches, and sugars, and that the key to good health is the kind of calories we take in, not the number.

Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It

Building upon this critical work in Good Calories, Bad Calories and presenting fresh evidence for his claim, Taubes now revisits the urgent question of what's making us fat - and how we can change - in this exciting new book. Persuasive, straightforward, and practical, Why We Get Fat makes Taubes' crucial argument newly accessible to a wider audience.

In the late 1970s when the government mandated we get the fat out of our food, the food industry responded by pouring more sugar in. The result has been a perfect storm, disastrously altering our biochemistry and driving our eating habits out of our control. To help us lose weight and recover our health, Robert Lustig presents personal strategies to readjust the key hormones that regulate hunger, reward, and stress; and societal strategies to improve the health of the next generation.

The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain

Most of us have heard of gluten - a protein found in wheat that causes widespread inflammation in the body. Americans spend billions of dollars on gluten-free diets in an effort to protect their health. But what if we've been missing the root of the problem?

Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food

Physician and biochemist Cate Shanahan, MD, examined diets around the world known to help people live longer, healthier lives - diets like the Mediterranean, Okinawa, and Blue Zone - and identified the four common nutritional habits, developed over millennia, that unfailingly produce strong, healthy, intelligent children and active, vital elders generation after generation. These four nutritional strategies - fresh food, fermented and sprouted foods, meat cooked on the bone, and organ meats - form the basis of the Human Diet.

Thousands of books have been written about the latest and greatest diets that will help people lose weight and improve health. But a key element in any successful nutritional health program is a tried-and-true method that most people haven't thought about - yet it could be revolutionary for taking health to the next level. This ancient secret is fasting.

While most books focus solely on the role of cholesterol in heart disease, Reverse Heart Disease Now draws on new research that points to the surprising other causes. Two leading cardiologists draw on their collective 50 years of clinical cardiology research to show you how to combine the benefits of modern medicine, over-the-counter vitamins and supplements, and simple lifestyle changes to have a healthy heart.

Keto Clarity: Your Definitive Guide to the Benefits of a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet

Leading health blogger Jimmy Moore and researcher and internist Dr. Eric C. Westman join forces again to explain the powerful therapeutic effects of a ketogenic diet—one that combines a customized carbohydrate restriction, moderation of protein intake, and real food-based fats—which is emerging in the scientific literature as a means for improving a wide range of diseases, from Type 2 diabetes to Alzheimer's and more. Simply eating a low-carb diet alone isn't enough, and Moore and Westman tell you why. Have you looked at a low-carb diet simply as a means to lose weight? What if you learned that combining a low-carb nutritional approach with a high fat intake produces a powerful therapeutic effect on a wide variety of health conditions that most people think requires medication to control? That’s what Keto Clarity is all about. Jimmy Moore, a leading low-carb diet blogger and podcaster, has reunited with his Cholesterol Clarity co-author Dr. Eric C. Westman, a practicing internist and low-carb diet researcher, to bring you the crystal-clear information you need to understand what a ketogenic diet is and why it may be the missing element in your pursuit of optimal health. This book includes exclusive interviews from twenty of the world's foremost authorities from various fields bringing their depth of expertise and experience using this nutritional approach. Moore and Westman explain why ketosis is normal and how this nutritional approach is being used therapeutically by many medical professionals. You will find a step-by-step guide to help you produce more ketones and track your progress, real life success stories, and more. The solid evidence for nutritional ketosis in dealing with many of the chronic health problems of our day is presented, including but not limited to: epilepsy, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, polycystic ovarian syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome.

While serving with the Peace Corps in Swaziland, Thomas Cowan encountered the work of Rudolf Steiner and Weston A. Price - two men whose ideas would fascinate and challenge him for decades to come. Both drawn to the art of healing and repelled by the way medicine was - and continues to be - practiced in the United States, Cowan returned from Swaziland, went to medical school, and established a practice.

The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

In this highly listenable and provocative book, Dr. Jason Fung sets out an original, robust theory of obesity that provides startling insights into proper nutrition. In addition to his five basic steps - a set of lifelong habits that will improve your health and control your insulin levels - Dr. Fung explains how to use intermittent fasting to break the cycle of insulin resistance and reach a healthy weight - for good.

The Truth About Statins: Risks and Alternatives to Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs

Despite the rosy picture painted in the ads of a miracle cure for high cholesterol and its attendant heart disease, the reality of taking statins may be far less pretty. Dr. Barbara H. Roberts, director of the Women’s Cardiac Center at the Miriam Hospital in Rhode Island, discusses both the benefits and health risks of these popular drugs in this comprehensive guide that finally reveals the questionable science behind the research studies. This honest, patient-friendly appraisal of the most widely used medications in the world may shock you, but it may also save your life.

Renowned neurologist David Perlmutter, MD, blows the lid off a topic that's been buried in medical literature for far too long: carbs are destroying your brain. And not just unhealthy carbs, but even healthy ones like whole grains can cause dementia, ADHD, anxiety, chronic headaches, depression, and much more.

Whether you're searching for a practical weight-loss program, simply want to eat better, or are already a committed low-carber looking for ways to make the lifestyle work for you, nutritionist Jonny Bowden reveals the secrets to finding and sticking with a healthy controlled-carb program. This newly revised and updated edition covers the truth about low-carbohydrate diets and reveals the major culprits in a high-carb diet, as well as provides invaluable ratings of the diet programs on the market.

Keto-Adapted

People mistakenly think that they need to eat less and exercise more to create a calorie deficit in order to lose weight. This is not how diet and exercise helps with weight loss. A well-formulated keto-adapted diet along with proper exercise builds muscle and muscle builds mitochondria. It is in the mitochondria where fat is oxidized so you can keep your cells and liver insulin sensitized. Weight loss and health is about healthy mitochondria and about controlling hormones and specifically insulin.

The End of Heart Disease: The Eat to Live Plan to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease

Dr. Joel Fuhrman, one of the country's leading experts on preventative medicine, offers his science-backed nutritional plan that addresses the leading cause of death in America: heart disease. An expert in the science of food, Dr. Fuhrman speaks directly to listeners who want to take control of their health and avoid taking medication or undergoing complicated, expensive surgery - the two standard treatments prescribed today.

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health

Since the introduction of dietary guidelines calling for reduced fat intake in the 1970s, a strange phenomenon has occurred: Americans have steadily, inexorably become heavier, less healthy, and more prone to diabetes than ever before. After putting more than two thousand of his at-risk patients on a wheat-free regimen and seeing extraordinary results, cardiologist William Davis has come to the disturbing conclusion that it is not fat, not sugar, not our sedentary lifestyle that is causing America’s obesity epidemic—it is wheat.

How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease

From the physician behind the wildly popular website Nutrition Facts, How Not to Die reveals the groundbreaking scientific evidence behind the only diet that can prevent and reverse many of the causes of disease-related death.

Publisher's Summary

Statins are the so-called wonder drugs widely prescribed to lower blood cholesterol levels and claim to offer unparalleled protection against heart disease. Believed to be completely safe and capable of preventing a whole series of other conditions, they are the most profitable drug in the history of medicine. In this ground-breaking work, GP Malcolm Kendrick exposes the truth behind the hype, revealing: high cholesterol levels don't cause heart disease; a high-fat diet - saturated or otherwise - does not affect blood cholesterol levels; and, the protection provided by statins is so small as to be not worth bothering about for most men and all women.

Statins have many more side affects than has been admitted and their advocates should be treated with scepticism due to their links with the drugs' manufacturers. Kendrick lambastes a powerful pharmaceutical industry and unquestioning medical profession, who, he claims, perpetuate the madcap concepts of 'good' and 'bad' cholesterol and cholesterol levels to convince millions of people to spend billions of pounds on statins, thus creating an atmosphere of stress and anxiety - the real cause of fatal heart disease. With clarity and wit, "The Great Cholesterol Con" debunks our assumptions on what constitutes a healthy lifestyle and diet. It is the invaluable guide for anyone who thought there was a miracle cure for heart disease, an appeal to common sense and a controversial and fascinating breakthrough that will set dynamite under the whole area.

Where does The Great Cholesterol Con rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

One of the best books on why high cholesterol blood levels are not the cause of heart disease, and how misleading modern medicine is in still promoting a low fat, hence high carbohydrate, diet. The best book so far about the harm done and uselessness in most patients of statin therapy, and why the pharmaceutical industry won't admit it, billions of dollars. Many people's health is being damaged by Statins, but the evidence, though piling up, is ignored.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Great Cholesterol Con?

On several occasions he would read the conclusion of a paper in a highly respected medical journal and contrast it with the study's actual results just presented, and then say,"To this I say, "BALLS!" (This is obviously a UK interjection meaning BS, but I had never heard the word used this way before. It reminded me of Monty Python, a bit.)

What does Simon Whistler bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

A Scottish accent (at least some kind of British accent) and a witty sarcasm, which is how Malcolm Kendrick wrote it.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I often laughed out loud. Other times I just shook my head in disbelief. For instance when he discussed why Scots have a much higher rate of heart disease than the French, though they eat a lot less fat. The French make a celebration of food, while the Scots consider the act of eating akin to filling up their gas tank of their car, something you'd rather not do, but is necessary. Thus the French have much less stress in their daily lives, as opposed to the Scots. Apparently Scottish food is horrible, and not generally a good way to lower stress, though it is appreciably lower in fat than French cuisine.

Any additional comments?

The medical profession of which I am a member, an MD, should be ashamed of the promotion of statins and low fat diets, which are promoting Diabetes, obesity, probably even Alzheimer's (see the book Grain Brain) and even more heart disease.<br/><br/>He doesn't just debunk the low fat diet, he gives reasons why some groups of people have a higher rate of heart disease. The real killer is stress, not fat in the diet. In fact it appears that the higher fat diets often are associated with less heart disease.

If I was writing some kind of publication of my own, this to be really, really useful. However, as a patient it really doesn't solve my problem. there are plenty facts and statistics involved of alternative methods of cures . I would have done better looking into a book that actually gives me applicable methods of preventing mortality due to heart disease.

Rather a difficult feat, to explain succinctly the biochemical pathways in the body. Dr K managed it with aplomb. His book was laced with humour that somehow fitted in well with the brevity of the messages he was trying (& succeeding) to get across. By asking pertinent questions he illustrated answers that can only leave one sceptical about Main stream medicines authenticity in "1st do no harm". Narration somewhat weird. A cross between sounding like a computer generated voice & a public schoolboy accent. Simon also mis pronounced rather a lot of words; but on the whole a smooth delivery.

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James Jackson

Essex, England

4/12/17

Overall

Performance

Story

"Shocking!"

I can't believe how twisted the medical industry is in regards to cholesterol and heart disease. This is a must read if you have been told you have high cholesterol and told to take statins and if you want to know more about CHD.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Bill Wynne

Wales

2/22/17

Overall

Performance

Story

"Over 50? = Read it!"

If you could sum up The Great Cholesterol Con in three words, what would they be?

Worth Every Penny

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Great Cholesterol Con?

When I dropped my own Cholesterol Reading by two full points without statins half-way through the book

What about Simon Whistler’s performance did you like?

I felt that I trusted him

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No but it has made me smile!

Any additional comments?

We each have to take responsibility for our health and our lives. Now that we have access to the internet it is beholden on us to do so. This is one book that gives a wealth of fact-based information, which enables us to have knowledge-based discussions with our medical professionals.

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Barbara the healer

12/26/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Irritating pronunciation"

What didn’t you like about Simon Whistler’s performance?

Although Mr Whistler seems to have a British English accent, his pronunciation makes me wonder where he was brought up. It did reduce the enjoyment of the book

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

NuffieldScholar

7/15/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Is there anything we can trust in medicine"

What did you like most about The Great Cholesterol Con?

Makes the Bankers involved in the crash look like amateurs.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Great Cholesterol Con?

women and Statins - no use....WHAT SO EVER!!!!!!

Which scene did you most enjoy?

The importance of stress, which for some reason is not measured.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

no took me several listening's and a study book

Any additional comments?

should be on the required reading list for all pre-med students.

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